The Empire of Austria; Its Rise and Present Power

by John S. C. Abbott

They, in conclusion, very politely informed King Henry IV. himself, that if he wished to unite with them, he must sign their creed. This was sincerity, honesty, but it was the sincerity and honesty of minds but partially disinthralled from the bigotry of the dark ages. While the Protestants were thus unhappily disunited, the pope coöperated with the emperor, and wheeled all his mighty forces into the line to recover the ground which the papal church had lost. Several of the more enlightened of the Protestant princes, seeing all their efforts paralyzed by disunion, endeavored to heal the schism. But the Lutheran leaders would not listen to the Calvinists, nor the Calvinists to the Lutherans, and the masses, as usual, blindly followed their leaders.

Several of the Calvinist princes and nobles, the Lutherans refusing to meet with them, united in a confederacy at Heilbrun, and drew up a long list of grievances, declaring that, until they were redressed, they should withhold the succors which the emperor had solicited to repel the Turks. Most of these grievances were very serious, sufficiently so to rouse men to almost any desperation of resistance. But it would be amusing, were it not humiliating, to find among them the complaint that the pope had changed the calendar from the Julian to the Gregorian.

By the Julian calendar, or Old Style as it was called, the solar year was estimated at three hundred and sixty-five days and six hours; but it exceeds this by about eleven minutes. As no allowance was made for these minutes, which amount to a day in about one hundred and thirty years, the current year had, in process of ages, advanced ten days beyond the real time. Thus the vernal equinox, which really took place on the 10th of March, was assigned in the calendar to the 21st. To rectify this important error the New Style, or Gregorian calendar, was introduced, so called from Pope Gregory XII. Ten days were dropped after the 4th of October, 1582, and the 5th was called the 15th. This reform of the calendar, correct and necessary as it was, was for a long time adopted only by the Catholic princes, so hostile were the Protestants to any thing whatever which originated from the pope. In their list of grievances they mentioned this most salutary reform as one, stating that the pope and the Jesuits presumed even to change the order of times and years.

This confederacy of the Calvinists, unaided by the Lutherans, accomplished nothing; but still, as year after year the disaffection increased, their numbers gradually increased also, until, on the 12th of February, 1603, at Heidelberg they entered into quite a formidable alliance, offensive and defensive.

Rhodolph, encouraged by success, pressed his measure of intolerance with renovated vigor. Having quite effectually abolished the Protestant worship in the States of Austria, he turned his attention to Bohemia, where, under the mild government of his father, the Protestants had enjoyed a degree of liberty of conscience hardly known in any other part of Europe. The realm was startled by the promulgation of a decree forbidding both Calvinists and Lutherans from holding any meetings for divine worship, and declaring them incapacitated from holding any official employment whatever. At the same time he abolished all their schools, and either closed all their churches, or placed in them Catholic preachers. These same decrees were also promulgated and these same measures adopted in Hungary. And still the Protestants, insanely quarreling among themselves upon the most abstruse points of theological philosophy, chose rather to be devoured piecemeal by their great enemy than to combine in self-defense.

The emperor now turned from his own dominions of Austria, Hungary and Bohemia, where he reigned in undisputed sway, to other States of the empire, which were governed by their own independent rulers and laws, and where the power of the emperor was shadowy and limited. He began with the city of Aix-la-Chapelle, in a Prussian province on the Lower Rhine; sent an army there, took possession of the town, expelled the Protestants from the magistracy, driving some of them into exile, inflicting heavy fines upon others, and abolishing entirely the exercise of the Protestant religion.

He then turned to Donauworth, an important city of Bavaria, upon the Upper Danube. This was a Protestant city, having within its walls but few Catholics. There was in the city one Catholic religious establishment, a Benedictine abbey. The friars enjoyed unlimited freedom of conscience and worship within their own walls, but were not permitted to occupy the streets with their processions, performing the forms and ceremonies of the Catholic church. The Catholics, encouraged by the emperor, sent out a procession from the walls of the abbey, with torches, banners, relics and all the pageants of Catholic worship. The magistrates stopped the procession, took away their banners and sent them back to the abbey, and then suffered the procession to proceed. Soon after the friars got up another procession on a funeral occasion. The magistrates, apprehensive that this was a trap to excite them to some opposition which would render it plausible for the emperor to interfere, suffered the procession to proceed unmolested. In a few days the monks repeated the experiment. The populace had now become excited, and there were threats of violence. The magistrates, fearful of the consequences, did every thing in their power to soothe the people, and urged them, by earnest proclamation, to abstain from all tumult. For some time the procession, displaying all the hated pomp of papal worship, paraded the streets undisturbed. But at length the populace became ungovernable, attacked the monks, demolished their pageants and pelted them with mire back into the convent.

This was enough. The emperor published the ban of the empire, and sent the Duke of Bavaria with an army to execute the decree. Resistance was hopeless. The troops took possession of the town, abolished the Protestant religion, and delivered the churches to the Catholics.

The Protestants now saw that there was no hope for them but in union. Thus driven together by an outward pressure which was every day growing more menacing and severe, the chiefs of the Protestant party met at Aschhausen and established a confederacy to continue for ten years. Thus united, they drew up a list of grievances, and sent an embassy to present their demands to the emperor. And now came a very serious turn in the fortunes of Rhodolph. Notwithstanding the armistice which had been concluded with the Turks by Rhodolph, a predatory warfare continued to rage along the borders. Neither the emperor nor the sultan, had they wished it, could prevent fiery spirits, garrisoned in fortresses frowning at each other, from meeting occasionally in hostile encounter. And both parties were willing that their soldiers should have enough to do to keep up their courage and their warlike spirit. Aggression succeeding aggression, sometimes on one side and sometimes on the other, the sultan at last, in a moment of exasperation, resolved to break the truce.

A large army of Turks invaded Croatia, took several fortresses, and marching up the valley of the Save, were opening before them a route into the heart of the Austrian States. The emperor hastily gathered an army to oppose them. They met before Siseck, at the confluence of the Kulpa and the Save. The Turks were totally defeated, with the loss of twelve thousand men. Exasperated by the defeat, the sultan roused his energies anew, and war again raged in all its horrors. The advantage was with the Turks, and they gradually forced their way up the valley of the Danube, taking fortress after fortress, till they were in possession of the important town of Raab, within a hundred miles of Vienna.